The invention relates to a flexible shipping container, particularly for bulk goods, with a cylindrical or cube-shaped carrying bag made of fabric of synthetic fiber or synthetic thread. The shipping container has a lid section in the region of the upper side panel edge of the carrying bag.
A shipping container of this type is known from the German Patent No. 28 00 736. For this container, cuts from a fabric, particularly a cross-laminated synthetic fabric, are connected by sewing or gluing to form a cylindrical or cube-shaped carrying bag. It is advantageous for such a shipping container to have a large volume and load capacity with a small weight of its own. The empty container can be folded up and takes up very little storage space.
It is further known to provide a lid section on the top and/or bottom side to prevent the overflow of bulk material, such as synthetic granules, over the upper side panel edge. Filling of such containers with a lid section, as presented in the German Patent No. 92 13 812 U1, is usually done through a fill opening, that may continue as a short fill tube. After filling the container, the opening, or the tube, is tied up with a cord, for example, such that spilling of the bulk material from the fill tube is prevented. For bulk material with a very small particulate size, or for food supplies and/or pharmaceutical substances, it is known to provide an inner sack made of synthetic foil material that ends at the fill opening or the fill tube. This prevents a trickling out of the bulk material through the synthetic fabric of the carrying bag, or soiling of the bulk material from the outside, respectively.
The disadvantage of this arrangement is that, in order to obtain a clean shipping container, a new inner sack needs to be inserted with substantial effort when re-using the shipping container for goods of the type mentioned above. For this purpose, the present inner sack needs to be removed through the small fill opening and a new inner sack inserted through the same path. Replacing the inner sack is time-consuming and requires additional devices, for example, to blow up the inner sack to ensure complete unfolding of the inner sack on the inside of the shipping container.
Experiments to attach the lid section to the side panels of the shipping container using Velcro have brought less than satisfactory results because the load capacity of a Velcro connection is weak in itself and is additionally reduced as the hook and loop bands get dirty. This results in the undesired loosening of the lid section.